Oh, I'm not denying that the UX is there, it has been at par or better for 20 years. It's just no one will ever do it - except for developers, enthusiasts, or people in specific industries.
I would love it to happen but the suggestion that there is anything the developer community can do is wrong. This isn't like the move to get friends and family to swap to Firefox in 2004, that was easy, it was in parallel with no data or app loss. With no new UX to learn.
I can get my parents to change to a different web browser. I could never get them to swap to Linux. I doubt I could get them to reinstall the os they currently use!
The average user is happy and willing to install
- different game launchers,
- Chrome browser,
- Skype, Discord or other chat applications,
- update GPU drivers regularly,
- tolerate the abusive Windows update/reboot policy,
- install multiple anti-virus software just to fight with Windows Defender,
- etc...
but not willing to install a new OS, even if it's literally a few click.
I think we kept saying this "Linux can't be mainstream desktop player because it isn't default" so long, that we can't even imagine anymore that there can be other, stronger reasons too.
Defaults are definitely not meaningless, but users are willing to change bad defaults, if there is a better alternative. Sure, not your parents, neither mine. But most of people around you (I assume) and around me (I know) would.
Sure, just anecdata, but over time I have had more than 1 colleagues telling me proudly that they started to play around Linux on their machine, only to learn a few weeks later that they have abandoned it due to some (for them) insurmountable problem they faced.
Because installing a different OS deletes all your programs & data. Sure, you can maybe back it up & restore it, but you can't restore your programs & usually can't use their data with the replacements. Installing a new application doesn't delete the old application.
Of course if the user is technical enough they can figure out how to resize their existing partitions & set up a dual boot. But that's not the default, and that still risks corrupting the existing partition and therefore deleting all their programs & data.
Comments
Oh, I'm not denying that the UX is there, it has been at par or better for 20 years. It's just no one will ever do it - except for developers, enthusiasts, or people in specific industries.
I would love it to happen but the suggestion that there is anything the developer community can do is wrong. This isn't like the move to get friends and family to swap to Firefox in 2004, that was easy, it was in parallel with no data or app loss. With no new UX to learn.
I can get my parents to change to a different web browser. I could never get them to swap to Linux. I doubt I could get them to reinstall the os they currently use!
The average user is happy and willing to install - different game launchers,
- Chrome browser,
- Skype, Discord or other chat applications,
- update GPU drivers regularly,
- tolerate the abusive Windows update/reboot policy,
- install multiple anti-virus software just to fight with Windows Defender,
- etc...
but not willing to install a new OS, even if it's literally a few click.
I think we kept saying this "Linux can't be mainstream desktop player because it isn't default" so long, that we can't even imagine anymore that there can be other, stronger reasons too.
Defaults are definitely not meaningless, but users are willing to change bad defaults, if there is a better alternative. Sure, not your parents, neither mine. But most of people around you (I assume) and around me (I know) would.
Sure, just anecdata, but over time I have had more than 1 colleagues telling me proudly that they started to play around Linux on their machine, only to learn a few weeks later that they have abandoned it due to some (for them) insurmountable problem they faced.
The average user sees the OS and the hardware it came on as one and the same thing - I do not believe that can be changed.
Because installing a different OS deletes all your programs & data. Sure, you can maybe back it up & restore it, but you can't restore your programs & usually can't use their data with the replacements. Installing a new application doesn't delete the old application.
Of course if the user is technical enough they can figure out how to resize their existing partitions & set up a dual boot. But that's not the default, and that still risks corrupting the existing partition and therefore deleting all their programs & data.